Deceptions and Revelations
by Lucretia Cyphus
Summary: For OQ Fix It Week on Tumblr. Day 2 theme: fix the Zelena baby situation. Robin discovers the truth about Marian's return much earlier. Part of this, especially the end, was kind of based on catharsis so if some people seem OOC, that might be why. Apologies in advance.


'This is the right thing to do,' Robin kept telling himself for days after Marian's return. 'It's a good thing.' 'You weren't even with Regina that long.'

He tried to keep these thoughts at bay, tried to focus on how much it meant to Roland that his mother had returned. How many children could be so lucky as to have their mothers come back from the dead?

But as Robin watched his son play with his returned mother, the sun shining down on them as though trying to remind him of his blessings, he couldn't deny that something felt off. The connection he had once felt with Marian for one thing; it just wasn't there anymore.

"Well, years have passed," Friar Tuck had said when Robin had spoken to him about it. "You're not the same as you were back then."

"But years haven't passed for her, should she feel so different?" Robin had asked, still confused.

"Well, you've moved on. You were falling in love with someone else. It's not that surprising you don't feel the way you used to. Especially since, well, you and the Evil Queen were…"

"Regina," Robin corrected. "Her name is Regina."

"I'm sorry," Tuck said. "You and Regina have strong feelings for each other. Your heart is conflicted. But remember your vows."

Robin knew his friend was right, but he saw how Marian interacted with Roland. It wasn't the same. Marian had always been very physically affectionate with their child before. She had always loved picking him up and enjoyed the spontaneous hugs and cuddles he would give.

But now, well…It was subtle, because she never pushed the boy away or rejected him in any way. But her responses just weren't genuine. She always looked slightly annoyed when Roland wanted her attention. They had been feeding the ducks at the pond for about 20 minutes, and instead of smiling as she would have once, she had an irritated look on her face and was throwing the bread rather fiercely.

Marian left the boy by the pond and walked back to where Robin was sitting on the bench.

"He can do this for a long time, can't he?" She asked him.

"It's one of his favorite things to do," Robin said. "He really just loves playing by the pond, we don't have to bring bread for the ducks if you don't want to."

"It's fine," she said, curtly. "Just tedious. Plus, shouldn't we save the bread for us?"

"It was old," Robin said, shortly. What was the real issue here?

They sat in silence for a few minutes until it was clear Roland had run out of bread and was just idling by the pond.

"Alright Roland, come on! Let's head back to camp!" he called to his son, who grinned as he turned around and ran over to his parents.

Robin and Marian both stood up and he heard her mutter something under her breath.

"Such a stupid name, why on earth would you name him that?"

Robin stilled. He felt his breath quicken as a thousand thoughts began to penetrate his mind. He forced himself to walk back to the camp as calmly as he could. Most of his men were there, including the newly returned Will Scarlett. He was the one who seemed to notice something was off with their leader.

"Everything all right, Robin?"

"Yes, just fine, Roland was just enjoying playing by the pond," Robin said quickly, keeping the boy close to him.

Little John looked up from the fire and also seemed to pick up on his friend's distress, but he stayed silent.

It was a few hours later that he was able to make his way into Storybrooke. Marian had gone back to their tent and it didn't take much effort to convince Roland to go for ice cream. He beckoned Will and Little John over and simply said,

"Make sure Marian doesn't go far until I get back. And keep an eye on Roland, don't let him go off with her alone."

"Robin, mate, what's going on?"

"Just, please, make sure he stays safe. I'm not sure yet. Maybe nothing, but I have to know. Just trust me," he asked.

It was a mark of their strong friendship that the two men agreed to such a strange request from their leader. Although he was still nervous about leaving his son right that moment, he told himself the boy would be safe with his uncles.

He arrived on Main Street as the sun was starting to set, so Robin checked Granny's first, and found that Regina was in there with Henry at the counter

She saw him first and stilled. Henry turned his head and saw him standing there. Neither said a word.

For a moment he hesitated, as her face looked so pained at the sight of his own. But she was the only one he could trust to believe him and work this out.

"Robin? What are you doing here?" Regina said, getting up to meet him.

"Regina, I'm sorry to bother you, but could I talk to you for a moment? Alone?" Robin asked, nervously. She was the only one who might believe him, he knew.

She looked just as nervous, but she stood up and walked towards the corridor. Henry stayed at the counter, eating his French fries, but looked over every so often.

"What's going on?" Regina asked, turning to him and crossing her arms. Most people would assume she was being standoffish, but Robin knew enough about her to know she was subconsciously trying to protect herself. He felt guilty again, as what he was going to tell her may not even make it better.

"It's...well, it's Marian," he began.

"Okay, what about her?"

"That's just it. I'm not sure...I'm not sure that she's...her."

Regina stared at him, tilting her head in confusion.

"What exactly do you mean?"

"Ever since she came back, everything feels off, nothing feels like it did," Robin began, but she cut him off.

"Well it's not surprising with that many years passing for you," She began, but he shook his head and began to speak faster and more urgently.

"I've been thinking that too. That's what I've been telling myself, but even with that, things have felt off. And earlier today, I realized it wasn't me. It wasn't time. I don't know who that woman is, or how she made herself look like Marian, but she's NOT Marian."

"Okay, okay, what happened that made you realize it?" Regina asked.

"We were by the pond, Roland was feeding the ducks, and Marian seemed to be in a mood again. She just wasn't as maternal as I remembered. And yes, I did think it was because of the time she'd missed. But then when I called him back to us, I heard her mutter something about it being a stupid name, and why on Earth would I have chosen it."

Regina's eyes kept their confused expression for a moment, and then they widened as she remembered.

"You told me that Roland was named for Marian's father."

"Exactly. Marian was devastated when she lost her father, and Roland was born four months later. She insisted on naming our son for him."

"That's a very big thing for her to forget then," Regina said.

"Exactly. That's when I knew. She isn't Marian. Marian wouldn't forget why her son is called Roland."

"So, she's an impostor. But who? Who would want to do that to you?" Regina wondered. "Who would gain anything by pretending to be her?"

"The only one of my old enemies who I've seen here is the old Sheriff of Nottingham. He's not capable of something like this."

"No, I've met him. He's a brute but not clever enough to do this," Regina said, more thinking out loud than anything else.

"Do you know of any way to reveal who it is? Aside from torturing them, although it's tempting," Robin asked, his face darkening. When she looked surprised, he quickly looked sheepish. "I'm sorry, that's not what I should want to do."

Regina quickly shrugged it off.

"If anyone understands the need to hurt someone who hurt you it's me," she said. "Whoever this person is, they came after your child, not just you. So, let's make sure we can take care of them. The right way."

He nodded.

"There might be something in my vault that can help reveal someone's true identity. So, let's start there."

They walked back out to the table, where Henry had finished his dinner.

"Hey Mom, Robin," he said when they came back. "What's going on?"

"Robin and I need to check into something."

Henry looked at his mother suspiciously.

"What's going on?"

"Nothing you need to worry about right now," Regina said.

"Come on Mom," Henry said, rolling his eyes. "Is there another curse, another villain? Maybe I can help."

"Right now, it's better if no one else knows," Robin said, gently. "But we will tell you what's going on, and if you can help, once we know more. Is it okay?"

This was a promise (not to mention a more direct answer) that Henry didn't often get from anyone in his own family, so it gave him pause.

"Okay," he agreed. "Promise, Mom?"

"I promise," Regina said sincerely. "If it seems like a dangerous situation, I will alert Emma and the others. But we don't want to cause a battle if we don't need to."

Henry agreed, so Regina and Robin left the diner and hurried over to the vault. On the way they kept the awkwardness at bay by trying to decide who the most likely suspects were, but no one in Robin's past seemed likely.

After a few minutes they reached the vault and Regina began looking through the texts trying to find anything.

"I need to find something about revealing an identity. But it might depend on the type of method they're using."

"Have you ever impersonated someone with magic before?" he asked, looking through her potions bottles that were next to the books she had pulled out.

"Yes, and the spell requires enormous concentration, and it can usually only be done for a certain amount of time. I've never heard of anyone being able to do it for weeks on end. So, whoever this is, they've found another way."

"I wonder when they did it," Robin pondered as they flipped through a text. "I mean, no one could have possibly known that she would have been found by time travelers and had a shot at bringing her to the future to screw with me."

After half an hour of searching, Regina was no closer to figuring out what type of magic the imposter was using, but she came across something else.

"What is that?" Robin asked, walking over when he saw her holding up a small vial.

"It's a type of fairy dust," Regina explained. "It won't reveal magic, but it might help us stall before this person takes this any further."

"So then, what exactly does it do?"

"It will immobilize her. She won't be able to move, speak, and will be unaware of time passing. We can at least get her somewhere secure until we can figure what's going on."

"Then let's go see who's decided to impersonate Marian."

Robin and Regina walked back towards the forest when they ran into two people who Regina didn't really feel like talking too. Emma and Hook. The two seemed to be in the middle of a sweet moment, and Regina hoped they would stay that way.

Unfortunately, Emma noticed them as they walked into the woods and backed away from the pirate. Regina held her head high and still intended to walk without speaking to them, but Emma had other ideas.

"Regina!"

"Miss Swan, we're in a hurry, I don't have time."

"I just want to talk about..."

"If it's about you bringing Marian back, we're in the middle of dealing with that," Regina snapped and pushed past her.

"What do you mean?" Emma asked, following her, with Hook trailing behind her. "Are you two..?"

"The woman you brought back isn't Marian," Robin said before Emma could ask the awkward question.

"What, seriously?" Hook asked, incredulously. "I mean, she never told us her name, but you..."

"It's some kind of glamour magic to make whoever it is look and sound like Marian," Regina explained as they continued down the path towards the Merry Mens' Camp.

"But who would want to do that?" Emma asked.

"I don't know," Robin answered shortly.

Emma and Hook followed them back to the Merry Men's camp much to Regina's annoyance. Although, she had to admit to herself that depending on who it was it would probably be good to have some type of back-up just in case.

"Where is she?" Robin asked Friar Tuck as they approached the camp.

"She went down to the river," Tuck said, pointed down to where a Marian's silhouette was. He looked nervous as Regina took out the vial she had stashed in her sleeves.

"Alright, let's go find out who she really is," Regina said, leading the way down to the river.

They indeed found Marian standing by the stream. Regina held up her hand to signal for silence. She reached into her sleeve and pulled out the vial of dust. She poured some into her hand and blew it towards the dark-haired woman standing by the water. Marian froze as the dust hit her body. Regina and Robin walked over to where she was standing, Emma and Hook still trailing behind them.

"Okay, let's figure out what you're using to do this," Regina walked to the woman's front and studied her frozen form.

"It's not a glamour spell or something?" Emma asked.

"Not likely, we could have sensed that magic," Regina answered.

Robin moved to join Regina, staring around the still body of someone who looked like his wife. He was the one who saw it, and couldn't believe he hadn't seen it before.

"Good lord!" he said, and reached towards the woman's bosom.

Everyone came to look and saw him grasping a charm from a necklace.

"Whoever it is has been wearing this under her clothes."

"What is it?" Regina asked, never having seen it before.

"The six-leaf clover of Oz. I stole it a long time ago, and used it when I broke into the Dark One's castle so he wouldn't recognize me. It can change you into anyone you want."

"Six leaf clover of Oz?" Emma echoed.

"It can't be..." Regina said. "We saw her die."

"Did we?" Emma asked.

"No. We saw her disappear," Regina realized. "And then her time portal opened up."

Robin was staring at the woman with a look that went from surprise to anger in a way Regina hadn't seen yet. She watched as his fingers twisted the clover without taking his eyes from his wife's face. The anger only deepened as the hair lightened to a bright red, her skin turned pale and eyes turned blue.

"Well, I knew she was crazy. But even I wouldn't have thought of this..." Regina would.

"What would she have against him?" Hook asked. "No one even knew you two were together until she was gone."

"I don't know. But there's only one way to find out."

"Where can we take her first?" Robin asked, backing away. "We don't want her using whatever magic she has to get away again."

"We'll take her somewhere we can lock her up," Regina said.

"Sheriff's station?" Emma suggested.

"No. I'm thinking the asylum is better," Regina said. "But first, we have to find that cuff you all used to neutralize my magic?"

"I think Gold has it," Emma answered.

"She murdered his son," Regina said. "He'll give it to us."

Working together for the first time since she'd returned from the future, Emma and Regina levitated Zelena and got her across Storybrooke to the hospital, where they got her into a cell at the asylum. Henry showed up just after them with the cuff. Emma had called him and asked him to get it from his grandfather.

"Grandpa looked surprised when I told him, but he gave it to me. Said we should gag her mouth shut too actually."

"Well, we'll see, but it's tempting," Regina said, taking the black cuff from her son and putting it on her half-sister's wrist. Emma took her Sheriff's cuffs and cuffed Zelena to a chain in the cell.

"In case she'd try to attack without magic," Emma explained.

"Thank you, Miss Swan, good idea," Regina said.

When everyone agreed that it was safe to unfreeze the witch, Regina waved her hand and allowed her sister to wake up.

Zelena looked around as she came to awareness, her face full of a confusion they hadn't seen there before.

"Hello Sis," Regina said, her voice venomous with anger. "Welcome back from the dead."

Zelena reached for her hair, and when the red color confirmed that she'd been caught, her face morphed into one of anger. She raised her hands to use magic and immediately realized she couldn't. Her face went from wicked anger to horror.

"You didn't seriously think once you were caught we'd risk letting you use magic?" Regina asked, smirking at her sister's horrified expression.

For the first time since the sisters had met, Zelena was lost for words. Sadly, that didn't last long.

"Ugh! This isn't over Regina! I will win!"

"Not likely in here," Regina said. "This is going to be where you live for the foreseeable future."

"Did you really think you could pull that off forever?" Robin asked. "You didn't think I'd notice something was off?"

"Well it certainly took you over a week. Seems a lot for someone who supposedly loved that woman," Zelena spat.

"A woman whom he hadn't seen for years because she was dead Zelena. Don't try to pin this on someone else, trust me that will backfire on you," Regina said, reaching for Robin's hand as she could see the guilt entering his face.

"Well, it seemed to be going splendidly, so I have to know. What gave me away?"

"It doesn't matter," Robin spat. "What I want to know is what your plan actually was?"

"What does that matter?"

Robin walked up and got in her face, in a way that almost frightened Regina. Emma and Hook seemed nervous too.

"You murdered my wife. You murdered my son's mother, and then let him think his mother was back from the dead. I want to know what you were planning to do with that. You came after my son because of some one-sided feud where you're jealous that your sister got to be raised by your psychotic mother, and I want to know why? What could you have possibly gained?" He asked in a low growl that surprised Zelena enough to scare her. But after a moment she tried to hide it by going back to her blustering stance.

"I was going to get pregnant, and have your baby. And then you two could never be together."

She said this in such a way as to sound impressive, her arms crossed and nose in the air.

At first, they all just stared at her, Regina barely able to believe what she had just heard. What?

After a moment, one by one, all of them began laughing. Regina started with a chuckle and it slowly grew from there until everyone but Zelena was practically in hysterics.

"Seriously?" Regina was the first to speak. "That was the plan of the great and powerful Wicked Witch of the West? Get pregnant? Because he would have stayed away from me for that?"

"It's a good thing it didn't work because that would be literally the lamest plot twist ever!" Henry exclaimed.

"And what did you think would happen when we found out? We would have just let you go free with the baby?" Robin asked, slightly less amused than everyone else.

"You would have screwed yourself more than them," Hook said, with a grin at Zelena's idiocy. "Seriously, who would put themselves in that situation?"

Emma was practically out of breath with her laughter, but she choked out a,

"Who is even that stupid? Since when is getting pregnant a way to get revenge?"

"Because Regina can't have children! It would have given me something that I had that she can't, a child with the man she loves!"

The laughter stopped quickly as everyone looked confused for different reasons. There was silence for a few moments before Zelena spoke again, victory back in her eyes.

"So, she hadn't told you I guess, Robin? That she made herself barren, so she can never have that with you?"

"It doesn't change anything for me," Robin said firmly, and Regina let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. "I already have a child, as does she, and I'm not with her in the hopes of another one. The only person you would have hurt at the end of that, would be yourself, and an innocent baby. But we would have protected the baby, so really you would have just hurt yourself."

For the first time, Regina saw Zelena's face fall slightly, and she actually looked…not ashamed, not sorry, but she was beaten and she knew it.

"Well, congratulations Zelena. You win for worst revenge plan ever created. And it failed," Regina said. "So, I'm going to go live my life. I tried to give you a second chance, and you didn't want it. If you change your mind and you do want it, you can have the hospital contact me. Until then, you can stay here and wallow in your envy."

Everyone turned to leave, and Zelena was left alone with herself.

Emma and Hook headed back to the Sheriff's station. Henry stayed with Robin and Regina as he walked back, but then decided to go see his grandparents, although Regina thought he could sense that she and Robin needed a moment alone.

"What am I going to tell Roland?" Robin asked. "His mother has now essentially died twice."

"Actually, I can give him a forgetting potion. He'll lose the time she was back, but at least it wasn't very long."

"Wow. That's, convenient," Robin said.

"I know, and in this case, a good solution."

They walked back towards the vault, still quiet. Regina still felt awkward in the silence, so she decided to address the news Robin had just received from her sister.

"Zelena was right," Regina said, nervously.

Robin turned to her with a questioning look on his face.

"About me being…well…that I can't have babies. You and I…that is one thing we won't be able to have together," she explained.

"Regina, I'm okay with that. I wasn't lying when I said it didn't change anything for me," Robin said as he took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

"Are you sure?" Regina asked. "Because it's not something I can change now. It happened a long time ago and it was the right decision at the time."

"Regina, I believe you, I'm sure it was," he said, turning to her. "And I promise. It doesn't change how I feel about you or what I want for our future."

She felt tears of relief coming to her eyes as he looked at her with such love and sincerity.

"You…you want a future with me?" she asked.

"Only if you do too. I know it's soon and we don't have to decide anything yet, but it is what I'm hoping for."

Regina used to hate that word. 'Hope.' But somehow when Robin said it here, it felt right. She could hope for this future.

She leaned up to give him a kiss and let her lips linger on his for a moment after they were done.

"It's what I want too," she said.

Robin smiled.

"Why don't we go back to the camp and get Roland, and after we give him that potion, we can call Henry to join us for dinner? Properly this time, no witches or villains in the way?"

Regina sighed with happiness.

"That sounds lovely. We can do that," she answered, as they started walking hand in hand into the forest. For the first time in a long time, Regina felt like everything was going to be okay. Maybe even better than just okay.


End file.
